Two Dublin Families at war as underworld godfathers fight for supremacy

All-out gang war has broken out in Dublin, with two high-profile murders within a few days

On Monday 8th February Eddie Hutch, 59, brother of former gangland boss Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, was shot dead by four masked men at his home in Poplar Row in Dublin’s north inner city.

Eddie Hutch

Detectives have no doubt it was a revenge killing for the murder three days earlier of leading Dublin criminal David Byrne, 33, in a prohibition era, Chicago-style attack at the Regency Hotel, also on Dublin’s North Side.

David Byrne’s body

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Fatal Dublin Shooting at boxing weigh-in Linked To Gangland Feud

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Byrne’s murder at a boxing weigh-in before 200 people, including children, was believed to have been in retaliation for last September’s assassination of 34-year-old Gary Hutch, a nephew of both Eddie and The Monk, near Marbella in southern Spain.

Gary Hutch

Gary Hutch is believed to have been shot dead by members of a gang run by Spain-based Dublin criminal Christy “Dapper Don” Kinahan, 59, with whom Byrne worked in massive ongoing operations to smuggle drugs into Britain and Ireland. Gary Hutch was believed by the Kinahan gang to have been a police informer.

Christy ‘Dapper Don ‘ Kinahan

Kinahan, who has served terms in prison, lives in a $7 million mansion near Marbella. Kinihan is thought to have stashed away hundreds of millions of euros from his criminal activities.

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Inside the Irish Mafia

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His son, Daniel, a boxing promoter, was believed to have been a target in the Friday Regency Hotel shooting by a gang of six, including three men disguised as an elite Swat unit from the gardai (Irish police), a man dressed as a woman, and two others.

Daniel Kinahan, who travelled from Spain for the boxing tournament – abandoned after the shootout – was reported to have escaped by diving with his bodyguard through a window.

Two of murder victim David Byrne’s criminal associates were also injured in the shooting and received hospital treatment. The hotel attack gang used IRA-style AK47 rifles and pistols in the attack.

Although the Continuity IRA on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack in a coded phone call to the BBC – claiming it was in revenge for the 2012 murder of Real IRA Dublin boss Alan Ryan – Gardai were skeptical the call was genuine. They are convinced it is a gangland war not involving paramilitaries.

Within hours of the call, and despite a huge Garda presence at checkpoints throughout Dublin, four men drove a silver BMW to Eddie Hutch’s home where they killed him immediately with several shots.

They abandoned their car a short distance away and made efforts to set fire to it, but it was seized in time by Gardai who also found balaclavas and a can of petrol inside the vehicle.

In the Friday shooting at the Regency Hotel – a familiar sight to tourists on the way to Dublin Airport – one child was heard on a video phone-recording scream, “Daddy, help me! What was that?”

Kevin McAnena, a sports reporter for BBC Radio Foyle in Northern Ireland who was at the weigh-in, said he dived behind a desk and a gunman peered over and aimed a rifle at him but didn’t fire.

McAnena added, “I was looking down the barrel of the gun and thought I was going to die. It was utterly terrifying.”

Detectives believe some of the gang may have been imported from abroad, but eyewitnesses also said at least one of the masked gunmen disguised as a Garda spoke with a Dublin accent.

Gardai collected video footage and photographs from the scene and they believe they are close to identifying some of the gunmen. They also say evidence in the car seized after the Eddie Hutch murder will help them trace the gunmen who killed him.

Eddie Hutch was known to the Gardai, but for mostly minor crimes. Although relatives were linked to gangland, he was not regarded as violent and was not believed to be criminally active.

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Gerry Hutch

Profile

Gerry Hutch (born 1963) is an Irish former criminal. He was regarded as the prime suspect for two of the biggest armed robberies in Irish history. Known for leading a “disciplined, ascetic lifestyle” since leaving prison in 1985, he was christened “The Monk” by Veronica Guerin, an investigative journalist who applied nicknames to Ireland’s crime bosses before being assassinated in 1996

Early life

Born in central Dublin, his career began at the age of 10 when Hutch joined the Bugsy Malone Gang of inner city youngsters (named after the feature film), which he later led, whose crimes in the 1970s included “jump-overs” – jumping over bank counters, grabbing cash and running.

He was later part of a gang involved in major robberies and received many convictions between 1970 and 1983 intermittently spending time in prison. His gang was said to have amassed an estimated IR£40 million from a series of bank robberies, jewellery heists, and fraud scams spanning almost eight years. Hutch has also been awarded money from legal actions in Irish courts. These included £8,500 won from Securicor Ireland in June 1991, £2,000 from the Sunday Tribune newspaper in a libel action and around £26,000 won in legal actions against the Irish state.

Hutch admitted to being a “convicted criminal” in a 2008 interview with The Independent, but insisted that he made his money through property deals, not crime.

Corinthians Boxing Club

In 1998 he was a founder member of the Corinthians Boxing Club in Dublin and has served as treasurer for the club. The club has a full gym and a boxing ring. The latter was donated by film director Jim Sheridan after making the film The Boxer.

Criminal Assets Bureau

In 1999, in the course of court proceedings brought against Hutch by the Irish state’s anti money laundering agency, the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), Detective Chief Superintendent Felix McKenna stated that Hutch had been involved in the IR£1.7 million robbery of an armoured van at Marino Mart in January 1987 and the IR£3 million armed robbery of a Brinks Allied Security Depot in Clonshaugh, County Dublin, in 1995, which had been the largest cash robbery in the State at the time.

Hutch eventually reached an IR£1.2m settlement with the CAB to “cover back taxes and interest for a nine-year period”.

Carry Any Body

After the CAB settlement, Hutch applied for and was granted a taxi licence, and set up the limousine service Carry Any Body. The name is a humorous reference to the Criminal Assets Bureau.

He has featured in the Irish media as he has driven celebrities including Mike Tyson on their visits to Ireland.

Film and television

Hutch appeared on RTÉ’s Prime Time programme in March 2008 where he was interviewed about his life and criminal career. Hutch denied any criminal activity, since his last prison sentence, other than tax evasion.

Hutch was the subject of investigation in the Irish TV3 channel’s television series, Dirty Money. Episode 5, which aired March 2008 was solely devoted to the assets seized by the CAB from Hutch and the threat to seize assets from his family